In the New York Times magazine this weekend was a longish piece on comedians who are using the Web as a medium for their comedy, including the two guys who do Ask A Ninja — and way down at the end of the article is a section on one of my favourite online comics, the incomparable Ze Frank.

I forget how I came across The Show, as Ze (which is apparently short for Hosea) calls his daily vlog — in which he mostly just stares into the camera at close range and does a rapid-fire monologue on various things, much of it without blinking — but I have been devoted to it ever since, even though I can’t really explain the attraction. Sometimes it is hilarious, sometimes it is just plain weird.

What’s also fascinating is the community that has developed around The Show, with message boards (in which Ze regularly appears to respond to comments), and the micro-patronage campaign he recently started where viewers can buy small jewel icons or large plastic ducky icons to put on the site as a way of supporting the show. Ze also regularly asks viewers and forum members for suggestions.

In the article, Ze makes it clear that one of the reasons he doesn’t like YouTube is that it removes his pieces from that community:

For me, the show itself is far less interesting than everything around it. And if you stick it on YouTube, out of context, it loses all the inside jokes, all the responses, the history of what led up to that show. The framing gets lost.

Is he right to turn his back on the viral magic of YouTube? I can’t say. But he says he’s happy with what he makes from the post-roll ads and other things he sells — and perhaps he is right. Devotion to the community might be the best thing he has going for him.

Far be it from me to take issue with Robert Scoble, or for that matter Jeneane Sessum — who doesn’t suffer fools gladly — but until we can measure likeability or engagement then downloads will have to do. And it seems obvious that unless Andrew Baron of Rocketboom is a complete and utter liar when he talks about his statistics, Rocketboom is leagues ahead of Ze Frank. This all stems from the recent throwdown between Ze and the Rocket.

Does that matter? Not to Jeneane and Robert and other Ze fans — of which I am one. We care that he is bizarre and funny and engaging. But I bet it matters to Ze. Like Rocketboom, I assume that Ze Frank is looking for revenue so that he can keep buying those expensive props (like the duck) and new paint for the wall he sits in front of. And when it comes to video, downloads and unique eyeballs are the currency that advertisers want to hear about. As Scott points out, old or new media, you have to have the stats.

Once Ze and Rocketboom get more advertising, then (strangely enough) it will get easier to measure engagement — because then you can track who clicked for the $10-off coupon on Swiss Chalet or the discount pass to Six Flags or whatever the hell they decide to advertise. Scoble is on the right track when he talks about how a mention in USA Today gets more readers but a mention on Scoble gets more clicks.

If Ze wants to really thumb his nose at Rocketboom, all he has to do is find a way to turn those duckie-lovers into clickers. Maybe his duck-sponsorship program, which Google Checkout recently axed and then changed its mind on, will give him some new numbers for a future Rocketboom smackdown. In other video-blog related news, the guys at Ask A Ninja are looking for ad money based on a $50 CPM, which would mean $50,000 to $100,000 per show (assuming their stats are legit).